Microsoft exec- Commercial software stable and reliable

[hard candy]

"A senior Microsoft executive told a BBC documentary that people should use commercial software if they're looking for stability.

"I don't think (open source) is anti-Microsoft in the sense that it's giving people choices in the technologies that they use," Jonathan Murray, the vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft Europe, told BBC World in the first part of the documentary "The Code Breakers," which aired this week.
"Some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model. And again, at the end of the day, you make the choice based on what has the highest value to you," Murray continued. "

"Part 2 of "The Code Breakers" is due to be screened next week on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Program times can be found on the BBC World Web site.
Currently, the documentary is only available on BBC World, which isn't broadcast in the United Kingdom."

"The Code Breakers-
Microsoft has dominated the world of computing for many years, with its heavily guarded ‘code’ being beyond reach to many in the developing nations. In some of the poorest countries the cost of upgrading an operating system to keep up with the rest o fthe world amounts to a year's wages, and there are few legitimate options. In Thailand for example, 95 percent of software on computers is pirated. The poorest countries are now beginning to use free or open source software (FOSS), a software that parallels many of Microsoft's programmes but with the major difference being that they are distributed free of charge and can be altered by computer programmers who are allowed unfettered access to the 'source code'. In this two-part documentary, Code Breakers includes stories and interviews from around the world where FOSS is making an impact, from disaster management in Sri Lanka to tortoise breeding programmes in the Galapagos."

So a BBC program not available in the UK?? Kind of like CBS or NBC not airing in the USA.
BBC World

Trying to see if it can be seen in the USA.
Well, it was broadcast at 06:30 EST yesterday here. Maybe a podcast, anyone? Or torrent?
I read where the whole series is to be released copyright free after the last episode is broadcast.
APDIP

[EnigmaOne]

Reliability? Dependability?

What is this...another 'Get The Facts' campaign?

Heh...You can rely upon microsoft OSses to crash, dependably taking out your crucial data. You can't rely upon microsoft's security model to protect your personal information, but you can dependably predict that identity theft is a realistic possibility for anyone who thinks otherwise.

Maybe that's what Murray was talking about: you have NO reliability and/or dependability with ms.

> cackle <

[GliderMike]

For a while now Microsoft seemed to stay away from pimping their wares because of stability and reliability because even they knew that was a lot of wool to pull over people's eyes. That's one reason we saw a whole lot of advertisement discussing ease of administration (another false claim), and lower TCO (that's a tough sell as well).

Apparently those days are gone and this guy is nuts. Reliable alright, that's why my company has to ensure their MS and IIS based web and app servers are rebooted each and every day to prevent our enteprise web based apps from crashing. And unfortunately that's just one small example of their "reliability".

And security? Now I know he's joking right?

[Parcival]

Reliable alright, that's why my company has to ensure their MS and IIS based web and app servers are rebooted each and every day to prevent our enteprise web based apps from crashing.

I figured it must be bad and Windows servers don't get a yearlong uptime, but that bad?

[bwkaz]

Well, we don't have to restart our IIS or 2K Server boxes at work every day -- but we do have to reboot them once a month, every time another set of security patches comes out. (Way to go MS; make in-use files not be delete-able, so you have to reboot to replace them! That's a good idea! Sigh.)

They're claiming IIS is more reliable and stable than Apache -- which is flat-out WRONG. Sorry guys, you lose.

[GliderMike]

I figured it must be bad and Windows servers don't get a yearlong uptime, but that bad?

Unfortunately yes, that bad. My other favorite is when MS SQL just up and quits during our overnight batch processing. That's always fun. Sure, SQL starts itself back up. Of course batch jobs don't care and have failed by then :-)

Don't even get me started on patching. The last time we patched we had four critical, highlly business impacting events as a result of problematic patches. For a long time I have been pushing to change our policy to specify patching should be done no more than quarterly, better yet, semi-annually.

Grrrr.